RICOCHET tightens PC security, limits unverified players to casual playlists

PC players who do not clear Microsoft Azure Attestation are no longer staying in the main competitive pool. Team RICOCHET said those accounts will be moved into a separate matchmaking pool and, for now, can only queue into Nuketown 24/7 in Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 and Battle Royale Casual in Call of Duty: Warzone.

The Season 04 RICOCHET Anti-Cheat update, published June 4, 2026, says Activision is requiring modern PC security standards to reach competitive playlists. In plain English, Microsoft Azure Attestation is a remote verification check that confirms a PC’s security settings through trusted external servers instead of relying only on what the local machine reports. Activision says players must successfully complete that MAA process to access all playlists.

RICOCHET said the restriction was necessary because the group of players who have not passed attestation is small, and limiting them to a narrow set of modes helps preserve healthy matchmaking. That means anyone who fails the check should expect to be routed away from the most competitive lobbies and into the smaller casual lanes until the attestation is completed.

The new rule builds on earlier anti-cheat changes. When Ranked Play launched in Season 02, Activision introduced expanded protections using Microsoft’s cloud-based attestation technology on top of existing TPM 2.0 and Secure Boot requirements. In Season 03, RICOCHET described the system as remote, cloud-based verification through Microsoft Azure, designed to make it harder for cheaters to falsify system information.

RICOCHET says its security features are active across Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, and Call of Duty: Warzone, with the PC kernel-level driver running only while a protected Call of Duty title is open. The pressure behind those checks is clear: in Season 01, RICOCHET said it shut down more than 50 cheat providers and disrupted nearly 300 reseller operations over the previous year.

For PC players, the message is blunt. If the attestation check fails, competitive access disappears fast, and the game sends you straight into the casual playlist lane instead.